The list goes on: beds, services are closing… and health establishments are worried about the summer. At least 120 emergency services have been forced to limit their activity or are preparing to do so. In particular, they lack nurses! More and more of these personnel who are essential to care are leaving the hospital to go on a temporary basis, as a liberal or even to reorient themselves.
“It’s a very serious move”
The National Order of Nurses recently updated a study and speaks of “hemorrhage“. The latter is likely to continue: the study was conducted among 60,000 nurses. Nearly 30% of them are wondering about leaving this year. 15% are certain to hang up their coats permanently.
“It’s a very serious movement”, comments Patrick Chamboredon. The president of the Order of Nurses underlines the weariness of the staff. One out of two public establishment employees would consider themselves burnt out.
Patrick Chamboredon is also worried about the next generation. According to him, about 30% of student nurses drop out during training. Many nurses have already left. For the national union of nursing professionals, there are tens of thousands. The Hospital Federation speaks of 15,000 vacant positions in 2022. Why are many nurses fleeing the public hospital?
“I’m tired of coming home every night crying”
because of their working conditions. For Julie, it’s an endless series of meals not served because they didn’t have time, patients left on stretchers because they didn’t have beds, colleagues who left and were never replaced. After 12 years spent in the Orleans hospital, the 30-year-old has just resigned.
“I did it for my own mental and physical health,” she explains on Europe 1. “I’m tired of coming home every night crying. Chain stitching, me, I don’t can’t take it anymore, that’s not why I chose the emergency department in the public hospital. One night I dreamed that I was slitting my wrists in the middle of my shift so management could hear us out on our demands. I said to myself, stop, it’s too much.”
Careers in the public hospital “no longer exist”
Some, like her, turn to liberalism to give meaning to their profession. Others give up exercising it. Catherine left in 2020, after more than 20 years of public service. “When you have to take care of someone, it’s not a file to be done that can wait until the next day to be processed”, she underlines.
So she turned to accounting. “That’s too bad, now I want to be quiet in fact,” she says. “I didn’t quit because I wanted to quit, I quit because I couldn’t do it anymore, but deep down inside, I loved my job, I still love it. It’s still difficult for me to accept… I got to a point where I said to myself but no, no, I can’t anymore”.
These nurses confide in having dreamed, when they were younger, of the public hospital. “But the careers there are over,” said one of them. “It’s humanly impossible.”
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